Self vs Self vs Johnny C
by koolkaori
Summary: Jem is the writing half of a basement project comic team. After many issues of putting it off, Jem decides to bend the laws of space and time to meet her professional crush--Jhonen Vasquez--in his own comic universe. Instead she meets Johnny C...
1. Default Chapter

The studio apartment was small, and though it housed ample furnishings, and was refuge to a veritable flea market of.well, stuff. The clutter was some- what organized and the room looked stylish and comfortable in a pretentious, urbane fashion. One poorly lit corner was occupied by an institutionally-styled work desk. Among the indecipherably scribbled documents that littered its Formica surface sat a mammoth computer presently emitting an obtuse, ambient whine. Jess sat staring obliquely at its monitor, considering the last month's cache of Internet messages.  
  
Tits or comic books: Which of these defines your worth? What should we stare at?  
  
She thought a while, and then began to type her reply haiku:  
  
Poem's good, not great, 'cause To nature, haiku's relate- You're dumber than sod.  
  
"Fuck you, Jeb. You lose," she said to herself and with baroque flourish she punched the "enter" key. She then continued deleting the other messages from porn-sites, her parents, and the twenty-five reminders from Blockbuster soliciting her yet to be returned movie rental. All and all, a productive web-session. She inhaled deeply, reveling in her iniquity. Her Zen-full moment was interrupted by the melodious ringer (the "beep" equivalent of the opening bars to "Big-Pimpin'"-programmed for ironic purposes only) of her cellular phone. Decidedly displeased, she picked up.  
  
"City Health and Human Services-no I'm not satisfied with my long distance service. I don't call people. Ever." Click. She resumed mashing down the "delete" key, taking immense pleasure in watching Times New Roman font disappear from her message box.  
  
The phone rang again.  
  
"Cecil's Insanity Farm and Rehab Center-please hold while we hose down the Baldwin brothers. Listen, cocksucker, while I commend your-tenacity-I still stand by my principles of brutalizing all solicitors with a plastic lawn flamingo. But go ahead, speak-you're being recorded and anything you say can and will be used as evidence should you be subpoenaed."  
  
"Shut the fuck up, Jess! It's ME! CHRISTINE! Quit hanging up and stop stealing my lines, you self-important third-rate hack!"  
  
"Oh. Hi Christine. I would say I'm sorry, but that was kind of funny. Have you heard the new Sleater Kinney album? It's good."  
  
"Right. Where-the-fuck have you been, jerk? I've called, I've left Internet messages." Jess looked at the computer monitor and felt only slightly guilty. Her friend continued haranguing her.  
  
".Don't tell me you've been 'out', we both know you have no social life."  
  
"Well that's my business. So when you decide to stop bitching, let me know- I mean, if I wanted abuse I'd call Jeb. Or my dad, for that matter."  
  
"You're a bloviating hole, Jess. Speaking of unnecessary word usage, have you finished the story for issue three?"  
  
"Yeah, but I'm in the process of tweaking it."  
  
"Fuck you-you've spent a week and a half 'tweaking it'. Take another adderall and finish, goddammit, so I can watch cartoons."  
  
"Sorry Christine, I actually have plans for the rest of the day."  
  
"Uh-oh! So you're finally going to return that video before the store issues a warrant for your arrest. Congratulations, Jess. You're one step closer to becoming a responsible adult. Call your dad. He'll be beside himself with joy."  
  
"No, and.no. I'm going to meet Mr. V today-V-day, get it? No? Eh. Besides, Blockbuster already has issued a warrant for my arrest."  
  
"So the wanted felon heads west in her pursuit of a worthy lay. Bear in mind that Mr. Vasquez might not be impressed by your criminal activities, but-eh. So when's your flight?"  
  
"If you would shut up and listen for a goddamned minute."  
  
"But I have been listening, Jem-babe. You never shut up," Christine interrupted. Jess continued as if this had never happened.  
  
".You'd know I wasn't making any plans to fly to California. The first of many reasons why not is that I don't possess the necessary capital to fund such a trip-nor do I feel like abusing my father's platinum card any more than I already have-what with the economy in its current state and all."  
  
"In other words, King Daddy's read the latest credit bill and you haven't yet concocted a viable explanation. That's uncharacteristic bad form, Jess. So-how do you plan to pull this one off, my friend? Please tell me you're not going to do the creepy Internet thing. As your dangerously under-qualified surrogate attorney, my advice is that you abandon this ill- advised course of action for reasons that should be obvious-even to you."  
  
"Your observations are astute but misspent, my paragon of social decorum," Countered Jess. Christine belched on the other end of the line appreciatively. Jess continued, "My plan is to make the leap between comic universes. Since I'm the provocateur of this little tête-à-tête, I'll give him the home turf advantage, as I'm pretty sure that bringing him here would be."  
  
"Rather disconcerting, if not creepier than the Internet thing," Christine finished for her, "Right. One problem-running the risk of sounding.stupid.I must ask just how, exactly, you're going to do that."  
  
"Very stupid, Christine, but I'll forgive you this time. As you have regrettably forgotten, this is fan-fiction. Authorial license provides me the means and freedom to create my own reality and dictate its governing laws (in our case, the anarchy, or lack of laws governing this plane, should be most advantageous-entropy rocks my fucking socks off!) As Kant would say."  
  
"Oh just shut up Jess. Goddamn," said Christine, cutting Jess off to preserve her own sanity, "Whore; you never took philosophy! Ever. I don't want to know how and why you've started speaking like a 19th century foppish fucking period novel, just tell me when you plan on doing this.Stephen Hawkins-thing before you talk (read: bore) me to death, okay?"  
  
"Now."  
  
"Whatever. In the doubtful event that you should succeed, promise me that when you get back, you'll tell me what an ass you've made of yourself. I also wouldn't get my hopes up-odds are your delusional hell and his are egregiously incompatible. I want to laugh manically at your inevitable failure-I'll spring for the Thai food (on your tab, of course)."  
  
"Your vote of confidence is inspiring."  
  
"And watch out for the Blockbuster police, okay? I don't think MasterCard is viable tender for posting bond."  
  
"I love you too, Christine. And get double order spring rolls, fucker! Last time you ate them all."  
  
Click.  
  
Unsupportive, but Jess suspected as much. It was an adequate conversation with her best friend and business partner. She put the cell phone in her handy invisible, multi-dimensional cartoon sweater pocket along with a lighter and emergency cigarette rations (She knew Mr. Vasquez would be less than enthusiastic about her nicotine habits, but what he didn't know wouldn't give HIM cancer-besides, she had a nagging premonition that she might actually NEED them in the course of all of this; taking them along was enough to quell her fears of impending disaster).  
  
She reconsidered and also secured a miniature, annotated dictionary with comprehensive thesaurus and slang index included. She didn't want to experience any sort of nasty vocabulary mayhem or interpretation barriers while dealing with the locals and possibly Vasquez himself. Her face screwed itself into a scowl as she reflected that her best-friend's pointed comments concerning her unfortunate tendency towards filating her own linguistic cock were scathing and, in all fairness, true. What pissed her off even more was that she herself couldn't even use those verbal skills to rationalize this character-flaw without sounding like a complete jack-ass. Oh well.  
  
When the reference was safely situated and issued an oddly loving pat, Jess finished her assessment of her other personal effects: checking her nose for boogers (unsightly), forgoing the morning's un-imbibed tequila (inappropriate), and tying her unruly mass of hair into a rude knot on top of her head (unsatisfactory, but serviceable). Self in order, she left the anti-social security of her womb-like abode for the equally anti-social and womb-like interior of her yuppie-girl-car double parked in front of the fire-hydrant just outside her apartment. She then began to drive down Dis- Reality Street, the momentum created by her Hunter S. Thomson-esque highway drift taking her past the amalgam of her own creative progeny. Gonzo the comic! This was Fear and Loathing in Jess-land.  
  
"Good God! What are these fucking animals?" As soon as she had passed Electrilolliland, she had come to an amorphous miasma of severed, floating, half-formed story outlines, napkin doodles, angry unsent letters to magazines, fake suicide notes, embarrassing fan-fiction, bloody horrible poetry, editorial rants, and substance-induced incoherent ramblings. It was horrific and terrifying-Jess felt herself slipping into the Fear-but she braced herself against the vengeful specters of her own failed literary pursuits.  
  
"Must. Meet. Jhonen. Vasquez. Must. Ask. Out. On. Date." Without stopping to study their habits she accelerated on through-soon enough she knew she would come upon the proverbial Fork-In-The-Road. And she did- almost meeting a fiery end at the hands of her own feloniously reckless driving as she skidded to a stop before the Crossroads of Cliché. In one direction lay the Architecture of her Literary Impetus (at least that's what it said on the road sign), and in the other lay the path to Elsewhere, impossible to continue on via automobile. She wasted no time debating between going forward or turning back-instead she pondered over whether she should run the rest of the way through the foreboding ambiguity. She thought better of this (on principle she never did the "running"-thing, she always strolled) lest she over-navigate and accidentally find herself in Nowhere (a destination she was all too aware her life might be heading) and compromised by sashaying her way between fictional planes.  
  
After a period of un-quantifiable brain synapses (she couldn't tell if it had been two hours or two minutes) she felt her body become subject to an unsettling, but relatively painless physical metamorphosis. She was determined to be pissed off if she ended up looking like a cockroach. However she found herself surrounded by alien, but recognizable, environs. She was making good time past a "Taco Hole", a Starsucks Crappee (she noted that the pretentious coffee chain was omnipresent, even in her own plane of reality) and was within proximity of a small child being viciously maimed by some sort of small, rodent-like mammalian. She had succeeded. She caught her reflection in a stylized corporate plate-glass window.  
  
"Holy-eating-disorder, Jem-girl-I'm skinny! Dolce Gabanna skinny! Fucking- ay!" Off-model, but still recognizably herself, Jess realized that she had been drawn in a completely different style than she was used to-Jhonen's style. That was another thing she wasn't sure would work. Just as during the rest of her journey, she didn't question the means of this transformation nor the various improbable forces that brought her into this current set of circumstances. When fucking with imaginary quantum mechanics, the laws of subjective reality, metaphysical paradigms, and the other stupid secrets of the universe, it's probably best not to question the capricious mechanisms and deities benevolent enough to make it all possible.  
  
The gawking denizens of Jhonen-Land made Jess realize just how ridiculous she looked sashaying down the sidewalk. She abruptly stopped-the violence of this motion conflicting with her exponentially accumulated inertia, and nearly toppled ass over ankles onto the concrete.  
  
"It's just a dance move-I swear," she announce to the now disinterested crowd. Feeling slightly pathetic she muttered, "Ignore them, Jess. They have no idea that you've just conquered the natural laws of existence. They have no idea, because you're super-cool. Manifest will determines all- Nietzsche this, fuckers!" She felt immediately better.  
  
Now that she had succeeded in her initial endeavor of, well, relocation, it was on to Plan Two. Unfortunately, there was no Plan Two; Plan Two had been back-burnered as her over-stimulated brain was otherwise consumed with whether or not the mad scheme that was Plan One would actually work. Now it wasn't a matter of GETTING TO Mr. Vasquez but FINDING him. Jess was in a quandary. She had two applicable courses of action (turning back was not one of them)-and either scenario completely, in Jess's opinion, sucked ass. Her inherent aversion to computers (they spent more time getting loaded than even SHE did) made any method of Internet search unacceptable, and her equal disinclination towards telephone conversation or any interaction with superfluous people made 411 another odious option. Jess fucking hated quandaries. However, the latter of the two evils pointed her to a solution that was nothing less than inspired. When the situation proves bleak and all alternatives seem to direct you towards despondent feelings of inadequacy, there are always-the Yellow Pages.  
  
Yet again, good 'ole verbal competency saves the day.  
  
Filled with conviction and reassuring feelings of intellectual capacity, Jess began to take decisive steps towards her intended destination-a dilapidated, age-yellowed tomb hanging by chain from a derelict phone booth. Unfortunately, this phone booth was also surrounded by a quay of highly-suspect black-clad Mabellene-sporting characters who ogled her serviceable décolletage as she ravaged through the much-abused directory. They sniggered, Beavis and Butthead-style, the entire time. Goddamnit.  
  
"(Sigh) Look, Inane Ass-clown Posse, take a picture. It will last longer," she could've been nicer, but her comment went over their heads anyway. A greasy victim of a bad Manic Panic dye confrontation slammed the phone directory closed and leered at her.  
  
"Can I help you?" She said, perfectly deadpan, but then she heard a voice that tried too hard to sound creepy/seductive, but falling piteously short of this goal, it lisped in her ear instead.  
  
"Eey poossie keht-I vont do zuck zyour blahd."  
  
"What did you just call-you want to suck my what?" she sputtered incredulously as her face twisted with a mixture of mild disgust and utter stupification. She whirled around, index finger swishing out the spittle he had lodged in her ear canal, and came face to face with an even greasier pale-face posteriorily violating her personal space. There was a pregnant pause as she examined his pock-marked face. Then she laughed. And laughed. And laughed.  
  
Her guffaws resonated off the surrounding architecture. Then it digressed into uncontrollable hysterics until finally, a good while later, it trailed off into a contented sigh. She wiped away a tear that had formed in the corner of her eye; "Christ-alive I haven't had this much fun since I threw uncooked bacon at those patchouli-funk vegan tweaker-bastards that one time. Oh, please stop. Any more of this might compromise my self-imposed Internet-generation ennui." She hoped that none of them were familiar enough with the word "ennui" to make the mistake of taking her seriously. But the ungainly party had already skulked off dejectedly.  
  
She looked around, trying to reorient herself, shrugged and turned her attention back to the phone directory, intent of finding her desired information when she was yet again distracted-this time by a pair of bugged- eyes peering at her from behind the business end of a park-bench. They belonged to some other sallow-faced personality she had failed to notice until just then (she briefly considered flashing her breasts at him to quell any interest this person might have in staring at her).  
  
"You were laughing at him-do you think he's some kind of joke?" said the disembodied voice of said personality. Its owner had obviously mastered a degree of hollow creepiness.  
  
"Well no-I mean kind of.more like a bad joke from some cancelled network- revival of the Adams Family-have we met?" She couldn't shake the feeling that she recognized this new entity-but before any cognitive memory or even another witty remark could form in her head, the set of eyes produced a face, then a body, then limbs, and these things suddenly jumped at her. Jess was rendered incapable of any action or memory beyond the dumb, quarter-sized "O" her mouth had puckered into.  
  
[This is Jess blacked out for several hours.]  
  
Jess awoke irate and ready to sodomize someone with a splintering wooden cooking spoon. She was now in some sort of basement with a rather jaundiced, intense young man glaring at her. She looked at her left ankle- it was shacked to the floor. Other than that, she was unharmed but her things had been confiscated, presumably by the man now inching closer to her. She really needed a cigarette. She gave her foot an experimental jiggle. The chain was bolted fast to the floor. She then turned her attention to her assailant.  
  
"Who are you and what's this all about?"  
  
"Oh right. Manners. My name is Johnny C. But you can call me Nny for short."  
  
"Right. I already know who you are."  
  
"Oh. Well who the fuck are you?"  
  
"Jessica Elizabeth Marquette-Jess to the lazy, Jem to the lucky. I would shake your hand-but both of yours seem to be occupied with.well, knives.so I guess you can call me the Snuggle Bear if you felt so inclined."  
  
"Hmmm. Ooh, ooh! Can I call you Mr. Jinggles?"  
  
"No."  
  
"You lied, you said."  
  
"It's MS. Jinggles."  
  
"That's right you're a girl."  
  
"And you're a boy-now who's observant?"  
  
"And just like any other pretty girls, you're soooo beautiful on the outside, but soooo ugly inside. I KILL YOU NOW!!"  
  
"Time out! Listen, bungus; judging from all of your.accouterments.I'm sure you know how not pretty organs are. As for the rest, while I appreciate the compliment, I must protest to being only reasonably attractive. That aside, please spare me your indulgent monologue on social injustice-better yet, let's discuss this concept of justice." He hesitated, she knew she had him.  
  
"Your words mean nothing to me," he said back off a bit, "but still, I will humor you. Don't try anything, though-I am still going to kill you." He menaced her with his knife for dramatic effect.  
  
"First of all, I'm not even supposed to be here. I mean, I'm not even a Goth-more of an emo kid, but not really (Dashboard Confessional sucks). By killing me, you might irreversibly damage the fabric of space and time. See, I was trying to meet this guy, Jhon."  
  
"Your futile appeals for your life change nothing. You were making fun of that guy, so now you deserve what's coming to you."  
  
"Who, Jhonen? No, see, I'm trying to ask him out on a date."  
  
"That guy at the phone booth-you were.rude."  
  
"Rude? Rude! Listen, that guy was accosting me with plastic fangs! Of course I laughed at him-it was ridiculous. I certainly don't expect to be taken seriously-anyone who habitually pretends to be Count Fuckula shouldn't either."  
  
"But your judgment has no basis. You assume a level of equality when it's obvious that your social status puts you in a position of deliberate contempt."  
  
"Right. Now who's judging people? Look, I'm the first to admit what a horrible person I am. I've lied about my SAT scores, laughed at people who've suffered great indignities, and I voted for Ralph Nadar. But for every socially-challenged boy I dated for two days in junior high and then dumped because I didn't want my cool friends to stop hanging out with me, there's ten dreamy punk rock boys that grew up from being dumped by stupid 14-year-olds like me and because of that they won't date me now. After every failed relationship, I think about how cool those boys really were, and how maybe I might have been happier with them, than hanging out with the asshole friends I ended up with. So yeah, I'm already dealing with the consequences of being a shitty person due to lack of self esteem. I'm not going to go into some detailed account of my misanthropic adolescence, and why, until recently, I had no self esteem. Suffice to say that to make up for it, I've finally, in my twenties, become a well-adjusted person capable of treating other people decently. And to various degrees it's the same for the other people as well. The behavior is compensating for their own miserable inadequacies. That doesn't make them any less shallow or stupid, but it doesn't make them any more so than your petty suburbanite-Gothic affectations or my indie rock pretensions of urbanity. True, they are horrible, shitty people. Fuck people, people suck. More power to you for your initiative-I envy your motivation. Patrick Bateman would find you inspired. Then again, your traumatic childhood hardly justifies any right you have to play judge, jury, executioner et al. Your actions put you on equal terms as those who you are punishing. This makes the converse also true. All those meat-heads you are so intent to represent your childhood demons are as justified in their treatment toward you, me, and any other hairless- monkey with an equal vendetta against them. Your hypocrisy is laughable, social message is without worth, and ethical argument groundless."  
  
"Who's Patrick Bateman?"  
  
"He's in this book 'American Psycho'; I think you'd like it."  
  
"Are you done?"  
  
"I guess so, yeah."  
  
"I kill you now?"  
  
"If you really want to."  
  
"You're not afraid?"  
  
"No-not when any multiple felon on my block could do so just as easily. No. Not really."  
  
"You aren't afraid of pain? Of being tortured? None of that bothers you?"  
  
"Well I imagine it would be unpleasant, but no. I know the pain will end and that when it does that means I'm probably dead. I've lived a life filled with good intensions. A lot of that life sucked, but it never made me into anything less than a decent person. I used to think that I would never be satisfied to die before completing a masterpiece that I would be remembered by. But I've recently come to the conclusion that I am my masterpiece-and I am as complex and vital as anything gracing the walls of a museum. I've seen all the places I need to see, and for those that didn't well I created them on paper all the same. I'm a little pissed off that I never did meet Jhonen Vasquez-but then again, we probably wouldn't have that much to talk about. But I have a family, and a friend on the other end of that cell-phone you took from me, they will all miss me should I suddenly disappear from their lives-and therefore, I have a history, and eventually-after you've killed me, I will also become a part of yours."  
  
"That's depressing."  
  
"Well life sucks all around. Give me my cigarettes."  
  
"Smoking is bad for you."  
  
"Yeah, I hear it kills people. And see, that's the whole point. What sort of artwork are you going to be when you die."  
  
"To be honest, I haven't given much thought to my own death."  
  
"That's unfortunate. If you had, you'd realize that killing people isn't even that special. It's not even interesting. Anyone or anything can kill a person. Destruction only creates more destruction, and that's predictable. It would be much more validating to create something, and I'm truly sorry you've lost the ability to do that. You can't even remember why you do what you do. You're not a piece of art-you're a piece of work. Now give me a cigarette. If I'm going to die, I'm going to do it on my terms." 


	2. the conclusion

[When last we saw our dynamic duo, our precocious anti-heroes found themselves at a climatic impasse. Johnny C., our favorite homicidal sociopath in the red corner, was about to eviscerate Jem in the name of socially conscious performance art. In the blue corner, or heroine, Jem, of questionable affability, had managed to stave away his brutal advances with a long-winded self-indulgent existential rant. Will either of the two garner the strength of will to overcome adversary in enough time to vanquish the evils of bad-crazy urban planning? Or will Jennifer Love Hewlett and the grid system doom the earth to a state of dismal apocalypse with Skelletor as overlord to the new corporate world order? Neither Don King, Mr. T., nor He-Man was available for comment....]  
  
"So what I'm saying is. . ." began Jess, "Wait---what was I saying again? Oh yeah: so this morning my bipolar alcoholic friend had left me this sarcastic message asking me what I thought was my self-worth. To get even, I just sent him a caddy message in response. I never really thought it would be so poignant---now it kind of makes me feel bad about telling him to metaphorically tongue-jack my shit-hole. . . ."  
  
"Well don't expect me to service you any time soon," Johnny shuddered at the thought of touching Jess in any sort of sexual context.  
  
"Likewise, Reznor-rat. Besides, I'm asexual. Can I get that cigarette now?"  
  
He relinquished her personables, save the mini-dictionary, which he was now thumbing through trying to make sense of the highlighted entries and her handwritten annotations---the earnestness of this scrawl, he found frustrating.  
  
"When the fuck would anyone use the word 'centripetal' in a sentence?" he demanded.  
  
"Well it must not be TOO difficult since you just did." That conversation was over. He lividly seethed at the thought of having no reasonable counterpoint to her irrational tenant. She said nothing more (he was convinced this was in smug validation of her own elliptical reasoning), lit a Parliament, and began smoking like a Nazi interrogator---angrily, as if she were giving lung cancer a blowjob. After a long period of agitated silence, Johnny cleared his throat.  
  
"So are you done smoking yet? I've graciously endured your filthy personal habit, but now it's passed my level of tolerance---I'm a sensitive guy, you know." Johnny peered her way, hoping to get some sort of affirmation to the last part of his statement.  
  
But the cigarette that had once been the object of her vacuum-like oral fixation lay abandoned, smoldering in film-noirish artfulness. She had now focused all her attention to her left foot, still chained to the floor. He was irked by her unrelenting disregard.  
  
"Don't bother---you won't escape. I made that chain-floor-thingy myself." He said, trying not to let his pride blunt the edge of his sinister intimations. She didn't even bother to look at him. She just stared. At her foot. It was beginning to Creep. Johnny. Out. He hadn't, up to this point, seen any of his victims pull off the trapped-wounded-animal-looking. . .um. . .thing so disconcertingly well. He was beginning to think she was sincere, which pissed him off more.  
  
"Talkative-Jess-girl-creature---I thought I would enjoy your silence, but your present demeanor is even more. . .disturbing. . . ."  
  
But she unsettled him even further with her lack of verbal response. Instead, she forcefully kicked away her silver, bubble-toed plastic shoe (Johnny only barely dodged this) and said shoe hit the opposite wall with a violent "thud!". He had no chance to screech his protest because he was soon horrifically transfixed as she (in a feat of unexpected, freakish balletic flexibility) firmly gripped her flailing, naked foot in both hands, clenched her teeth, and proceeded to mangle her own appendage into an unnatural contortion. This made a sickening "CRUNCH!" as it happened. He shuddered audibly.  
  
"Eeeeeewww!" Prone as he was to extreme acts of anatomical mutilation, he was cripplingly squeamish when it came to such impersonally methodical acts of self-violation. He opened his eyes to see his once helplessly imprisoned victim hobbling towards egress.  
  
"Wait one fucking minute---you can't do that!!" He screamed, too stunned to produce anything more forceful than two exclamation points. He leaped at her, attempting to block her swift retreat.  
  
"The fuck I can't," she said, then slammed the door in his face. She was secretly glad that a bizarre laser-tag episode---one she unfortunately associated with a rather embarrassingly pathetic failed relationship---had subsequently given her left ankle inhuman skeletal unreliability, thus making it bone-crunchingly easy to dislocate. And she was making good time too (she still held by her long-held preference to strolling---fuck running anyway) managing to circumnavigate the improbable architecture of his underground labyrinth of torture stalls.  
  
"BLOODY-HELL!!! I'm not finished with you yet---HOW THE FUCK can you find your way through my secret network of corpse basements. . ." his face was now dominated by his hubcap-sized eyes, becoming even wider in his rage as he still chased after her, floundering arms juggling her shoe, the mini- dictionary, his favorite set of knives, and assorted paraphernalia.  
  
The chase then came to an immediate end. Johnny suddenly wondered how he was now in his own kitchen with his victim humming cheerfully as she wielded what appeared to be an eggbeater. He didn't remember ever purchasing an eggbeater. Dumbstruck, Johnny stared at this tableau of banal domesticality. Apparently, Jess was. . .baking. . .  
  
"You should probably close your mouth." She said, without turning to look at him.  
  
"What the fuck?"  
  
"Making pancakes---you like pancakes, don't you?" she said, she stopped folding the batter and smiled over her shoulder at him. She spied her shoe dangling flaccidly in one of his hands. "Oh that's mine, isn't it? Thanks- --here" she snatched the offending party only to replace it with some kitchen implements, which she assertively thrust at his chest. He struggled to hold these and the various other utensils that required his steady handling. She noticed his uncoordinated groping and clucked her tongue at him.  
  
"Oh silly---put all that other stuff away; you don't need THOSE things in the kitchen---oh that's also mine, huh? Here let me just get that out of the way for you, okay?" she yanked the dictionary out of his arms, nearly compromising his already precarious balancing act. He mutely complied with her gentle orders, dazedly staring at the bowl of clunky pancake batter and then at the eggbeater in dim-witted alternation.  
  
"Just get all the lumps out, mm'kay? Unless they're blueberries---you don't want to touch those. They'll get all mangled and we'll have nothing but disgusting blue-green goo."  
  
He stuck his finger into the bowl and brought it back to his face for close inspection. He examined the viscous goop dribbling down his fingertip suspiciously, tentatively sniffed at it, then very hesitantly attempted to taste it.  
  
"WASH YOUR HANDS, GODDAMNIT!" Jess barked, back still turned to him, "God- knows-what-or-who they've been touching!"  
  
"Sorry," he mumbled sheepishly and set the bowl aside before conducting the necessary business at the sink. He finished and looked forward to completing his assigned task with new proficiency. To his dismay, Jess had already begun dolling out pale circles of pancake mix onto a hot, greasy griddle. He didn't remember ever purchasing that, either. He silently grappled with his pathetic impotency.  
  
"Um. . ." he squeaked timidly, unsure of interrupting the girl who had so easily taken control of the situation, "I don't want to sound---flippant, but. . ." Jess completely stopped what she was doing, but still did not look at him. He flinched for some reason.  
  
"U-uh-uh-uh-mmm, well, if you would be so kind to explain, I'd kind of like to know just what the fuck is going on here? If you're not too busy, that is," he added hastily.  
  
"Pancakes!" like an Eisenhower-era Tupple-Ware commercial, she held up a steaming plate for him to appreciate. Jess then shooed Johnny to the kitchen table, where she had already set a place for him. He dejectedly rearranged his silverware while she returned with her own fresh plate of pancakes and sat down opposite of him.  
  
"You look a little peaked," she said, brow furrowed in her concern as she daintily nibbled a small square of pancake, "do you ever feel like the punch-line to a really bad joke? I mean really bad---the stinkiest-cheesy- corn-ball-ever kind of joke."  
  
"I feel like I AM a bad joke," he said as he miserably tried to figure out how to get a handle on the situation.  
  
"It's 'I feel as if', not 'like'," she said amiably.  
  
"Whatever, it's still that stinky-cheesy-corn-thing, this Bad Joke I have become."  
  
"No, not a joke---you're just a cartoon. And I'm a comic scene-writer. A room full of comics and nobody's laughing---ha ha, comics, get it?"  
  
He shook his head and picked up his fork and knife. Jess just shrugged and munched on amicably. Wondering just when his day had gone completely twisted, Johnny saw his stainless steel reflection wondering the same from it vantage point in his silverware. Suddenly his grip around his cutlery became savage; he finally remembered his initial reason for bringing this strange Jess-creature into his midst.  
  
"I'll kill you---I'LL KILL YOU DEAD!!!! AAAR-REE-HEE-HEE!!! Once again Johnny C. jumped at Jess. Unperturbed, she dodged his commendable display of aerial acrobatics, and by the time he ricocheted off the wall behind her, she had deftly produced and gripped firmly, between her thumb and forefinger, a flapjack. With practiced fluidity and pimp-a-dellic execution, she backhanded him. The contact creating a sharp, cushiony "Fwaph-u-pu-pu!" that Jess found incredibly satisfying. Johnny was on the floor, hand raised to his ashen cheek, before he could register what had just happened to him.  
  
He had just been slapped in the face with a pancake.  
  
The chair made terrible, grating sound as Jess pushed her seat back under the table, lowering the outstretched pancake arm with the dramatic deliberance of a samurai. "I'm sorry, but this relationship isn't working. It's not you, it's me," she turned to him with empathetic, but firm eyes, "I just feel as if I'm. . .well. . .being smothered. I think we need to see other people with multiple personality disorders and form stalker/victim co-dependencies with them. No, no---we can still be friends. I just don't feel the same way about you anymore. You understand, don't you? I don't want to make this any harder than it already is. I mean---you made me complete, you know."  
  
"You've completely ruined my day," said Johnny sulkily, nursing his bruised ego on the kitchen floor, "I've unfairly become the victim of your farcical existence."  
  
"Well, to be fair, you got yourself into this. You were the one who decided to BE a victim. And I am the only antagonist to mine."  
  
"I hate you."  
  
"What can I say? Those are my principles, and if you don't like 'em, I have others. Besides, it wouldn't have worked out, anyway. I only date pre-law students. Toodles!" And just like that, she left Johnny's kitchen, Johnny's house, and Johnny, who had a feeling that she was going to need a lot of legal representation later on in her life and probably should only date pre-law students.  
  
Once outside Jess felt only slightly better. She had made it through that harrowing experience in one piece, and, all things considered, she was still the same bastard she was before she had been abducted. She did feel slightly sorry for Johnny---at some point during their confrontation she had knocked his philosophical teeth down his figurative throat, and Jess had the sneaky suspicion that it wasn't necessarily because SHE was right. But who had time to feel guilty---fuck that! She was tired, cranky, and needed to take her medication. Johnny C. was crazy anyway, and Jess doubted she made any impact on the brain chemicals that made him so. Besides, she wasted a whole day and still did not meet Jhonen Vasquez. Goddamnit.  
  
She stood at the edge of Johnny's neglected yard. She was thinking about Plan Four. And why was she thinking about Plan Four? Because Plan Two didn't work, and Plan Three was the pancake-thing, and she probably should be going on her way home now. Anyways, the locals were getting fresh. Why- --just as Jess was pondering Plan Four, a skinny artist-writer-type had absentmindedly knocked into her, spilling Ice-Sucky down the front of her sweater. She squinted up at him (he was a few inches taller than her, which almost never happened), decided he was Mexican, told him to go back into his dark hole and cry, and gave him the finger as he walked away. Then her cellular phone rang.  
  
"Jessica Elizabeth Marquette is closed," she said, then hung up.  
  
The phone rang again.  
  
"You have reached the offices of Jem, Jem, and Jem. We are presently occupied, but if you leave your name, number, and the nature of your problem, we will get back to you after carefully evaluating your case. Odds are, we probably can't help you. . ."  
  
"You're the last person I would ask for help, fuck-wit."  
  
"Oh. Hi Christine. I've got a bone to pick with you. . ."  
  
"The fuck did I do? Besides, I'm not the one who refuses to answer her phone."  
  
"I'm trying to avoid those noxious telemarketers and the like, i.e. Jeb, my parents, Blockbuster. . ."  
  
". . .The mother-ship. Honestly Jess, you need professional help."  
  
"You should've met this one guy I ran into today---do you realize that I was abducted by that homicidal Johnny-tweaker? I almost feared my life"  
  
"Jesus' freakin' corndog---you're the tweaker, Jess. I mean, calm the fuck down, you're still alive. That poor fucker probably felt like off-ing himself after listening to you talk at length. Speaking of stalkers, did you meet Jhonen?"  
  
"No."  
  
"That's kind of funny."  
  
"Shut up---goddamn, Christine."  
  
"Well you can tell me off all you want in about three minutes. I'm coming to pick you up. See, you're not the only one who can fuck around with space and time---didn't want you to think you were all that special?"  
  
"Well we all know how much you like to fuck around Christine."  
  
Click. "Bitch," she muttered to herself. Christine had probably been at Starsucks Crappee, flirting with Count Fuckula the whole time.  
  
"Lady, you talk a lot," said a small voice that came from somewhere around knee-level. Jess wondered if she had just said all that out loud. She squatted down to somewhere around eye level with the kid who had addressed her.  
  
"Oh hey there, little buddy. I was just yelling at my friend 'cause she was being a real stupid-head." She gave him a good-natured pinch.  
  
"My neighbor talks a lot too. He yells at lots of stupid-heads. Are you going to kill your friend now?" He kind of liked this lady. He thought the strange lady was funny-looking.  
  
"No---that would take too much effort."  
  
"Oh."  
  
Christine pulled the car up to the curb.  
  
"Well I like you, kid. But I gotta go---I kind of live far away, so you probably won't ever see me again. But you can have this dictionary. You can throw it at you neighbor if he tries to murder you in your sleep." The book had a lot of words and no pictures. He also noticed that "Property of Jess, Fuckers!" was written all over it. He wasn't sure if he would like this book very much. But he nodded his head solemnly anyway-as funny- looking as the book-lady was, she was almost as scary as his neighbor---who he noticed was now staring at him from the window next door. The book-lady ducked into passenger side of her own car, the kid was visibly shaken.  
  
"These Goth bys aren't so bad," said Christine, pointing at the artist- writer type that was now alternating between scribbling in his sketchbook and glaring at Jess. "That one's kind of cute. . ." The little boy could here the other lady alright, but he couldn't quite see her-she was kind of shadowy and the book-lady was blocking her. The boy peered around her, trying to get a better view of the second lady.  
  
"Do you mind? I'm trying to have a moment with this kid, here. . ."  
  
"They call that child molesting in some states---hey I think dream-boat here is Jhonen."  
  
"Oh shit, where? Is that him? Fuck---don't let him see me. . ." Jess ducked down in the seat, but accidentally stepped in an order of chicken yellow curry that had been carefully set in the floorboards to keep from spilling.  
  
"Hee-hee---Lady, you're crazy," said the little boy.  
  
"Goddamnit Jess, you asinine. . ."  
  
"You don't understand, Christine. I just told that guy off." Jess was mortified.  
  
"Holy restraining order, batman---now what are you going to do?"  
  
"I whupped Batman's ass. . ."  
  
"Right, right. I'm sure he was a real asshole in the first place. Just remember joker---there's a little kid outside your window."  
  
"Hey Squee," called Johnny from his house, "come have pancakes---you like pancakes don't'cha?"  
  
"Well, not anymore, I don't," said Jess, she leaned out the window, feeling slightly responsible for the well-being of this kid she had just met. She'd fucked up so many times today, she thought she might as well teach the child an important lesson in life---and seeing as how she made so many mistakes already, she would logically have to have learned something by now. "Hey kid, never run in front of traffic---stroll. That gives commuters plenty of time to see you, and you can revel in the omnipotence of holding up some portion of their day. Don't let them give you any guff-- -you're a pedestrian, you have rights, goddamnit. RIGHTS!! YOU'LL LITIGATE!!! Besides, running's for hosers. . ."  
  
And like that, the young women vanished back to their own pocket of Dis- reality. The fabric of space and time had shifted, and still nobody knew what the fuck was going on.  
  
The end. This has been a movie in four acts by Sissy Spacek, directed by Rock N. Jellybean, and written by Astro Boy. Music by Deez Nutz. Duechland Uber Alles! I like pigeons. Thank you. 


	3. Self vs PancakesThe Unofficial Third Cha...

The Unofficial Third Chapter with Jem's Orgasmic Pancake Recipe, Apologies, Disclaimers, Explanations, and Shout-outs to our Homies*  
  
*anyone who just wants the recipe should scroll past the rest of this bollocks and read the last page.  
  
JEM: So why are we doing this again?  
  
CAB: Well, A---because koolkaori is a paranoid git, and B---because nothing, not crippling insecurities of failure, not the eventual disillusionment of literary conceit, the threat of ex-boyfriends using your relationship as a horrifying anecdote to tell their new girlfriends, the consequences of fucking with the laws of space and time, someone else's copyrighted work, or being abducted by a homicidal maniac is as frightening or as potentially damaging as the opinions of an irate comic book fan/reader of fan-fiction.  
  
JEM: (shudders) Oh God, the horrors. . . .  
  
CAB: I should also take this time to tell anyone reading this who has not already read Part One and Part Two should cease reading another word of Part Three---in fact they should avoid reading the utter crap that is Part One and Part Two, and even fan-fiction all together. Go out and get some sun. . .  
  
JEM: You're out of control again---there's no reason to resort to such. . .extremes. Beside, sunshine gives you cancer.  
  
CAB: Your right, Jess. What was I thinking? Anyway, you want to tell these good people just who we are and who the fuck we think we are.  
  
JEM: Sure I'll handle this one. Hi folks. How's it going? Doubtless, you are wondering who we are and just what, exactly, we're doing in the superior works of Jhonen Vasquez. Well my associate, Cab and myself, Jem (a.k.a. Christine and Jess, respectively) are quasi-fictional characters from another lesser known comic Self vs. Self, subtitled "My date with Mr. V." Considerably lesser-known. Basically, it's the end page filler to all Pulp! Komiks, which satirizes the normal creator's note that accompanies most main-stream comic publications. We talk about nothing, and Christine makes fun of my exaggerated fixation on you-know-who.  
  
CAB: It must be noted that neither Jem nor myself have dated or even met Mr. Vasquez. And though we are fictional representations of a very real creative team, koolkaori has been given our expressed permission to use our fictional personalities in the name of even further self-parody. I mean, we've abused her friendship by essentially making her the Pulp! Komiks indentured servant---it's the least we could do for her, for all the years of dealing with us two and getting no publishing credit. . .ever. By the way, Jess---I think Jhonen has a girlfriend now.  
  
JEM: I refuse to listen to your malicious rumor-mongering, woman.  
  
CAB: Whatever, you idiotic pile. It's time for you to shut your speak- hole, anyway. I think koolkaori wants to get a word in. This is her story, you know.  
  
KOOLKAORI: Thanks a lot, you guys. No really---thanks. And the same goes out to those---what is it, four of you now?---who have read the story and sent feedback. You deserve it, after trudging through a mediocre narrative of inappropriate adverb manipulation and judicious use of foul language and profuse twistedness in general. I also have this to say for those of you who liked it and those of you who left such short reviews, I can't tell whether or not you liked it or have one of those sarcastic senses of humor, alike: while I appreciate your support and commentary, there is no depth nor relevant critique present in this work---any narrative as pretentious as this would have to realize its own absurdity, or else the author would be a complete jackass. Now I may be many things, but I do go out of my way to avoid being that kind of self-important moron.  
  
This being said, I must admit that I like this story. It is not representative of my work, nor do I think it is really all that good. However, it was the story I wanted to write, and I immensely enjoyed the two days I spent writing and sloppily editing it. I wrote it for an audience of we three---and I'm sorry that the rest of you have been exposed to toothy pain of my bizarre sense of humor. I know how NOT funny I am. Really. I do. I'm glad that some parts may have made some people laugh--- I especially liked the part I wrote about pancakes, and I hope some of you did too.  
  
I am well aware that anyone as pretentious as the way I portrayed Jess's character is not in the least bit funny or cool or worthy of being written about, unless they, like my character, realizes what a bastard they are at some point in their life. I think that, if you read the text enough to get something out of it, you will see that Jess knows what a horrible asshole she is, and that her behavior negatively effects her life as well as the lives of those she comes in contact with. Even I have yet to decide whether or not I completely hate her, or maintain enough reservations to feel ambivalent towards her character. But I do know that I like her relatively good intentions and the fact that she never uses these to apologize for herself. She knows at some subconscious level that she also wants to be a better person---but at the same time, in a very un-selfish way, she likes who she is. She doesn't take herself too seriously either, which I think is what most readers would have missed: no one is above her criticism; more often that not, SHE is the sole object skewered by the blunt instrument of her scathing wit. The same is true for the narrative, which criticizes itself in the same way. People who are nice, funny, collected, intelligent, and successful ALL of the time are nowhere near as interesting as those whose petty intentions, lack of virtue, and acute awareness of their own frequent failures send them down the slippery slope to their often messy undoings, and, ultimately, to their salvation. I guess if there were a point to the thousand-plus words I've wasted on this absurdity, it would be this brave literary statement: people don't always change and that's okay---it's their decision to make and when they do, odds are nobody will really care. It doesn't really matter much, since the only one it's important that it matters to is the individual him or herself, because the only thing that is important is the individual.  
  
CAB: Good God, kaori! Been reading the "Fountain Head" much?  
  
JEM: Shhhhhh!!!! Asshole; if I didn't go to philosophy, YOU certainly didn't either. . . .  
  
KOOLKAORI: Don't worry, I'm almost done. I need to apologize to all the vegans, Ralph Nadar, The Masters of the Universe, canonized literary geniuses (Kant, Nietzsche, Kafka, Bret Easton Ellis, Ayn Rand, Stephen Hawkins, Mr. T, Hunter S. Thomson, etc.), Sleater Kinney, Blockbuster. . .  
  
JEM: No really, fuck you Blockbuster, fuck you. . .  
  
KOOLKAORI: Wesley Willis, Jennifer Love Hewett, and telemarketers who work long hours for minimum wage only to be hated by those they solicit, to all Goths, tweakers, Eskimos, lesbians, and Jesus-freaks, to all emo kids, to Dashboard Confessional, and to all emo kids who like Dashboard Confessional, I am truly sorry you like them, to starving children in third world countries, to Don King, computer geeks and A.I. (fuck you Microsoft, filthycuntwhoreasswanker IS a word), and now, to Microsoft, to Jhonen fans, writers of fiction, writers of Jhonen fan-fiction, and fans of writers of Jhonen fan-fiction, to Jhonen himself, Cab, Jem, Jem's parents (send her money, please), and finally Jeb (fuck you Jeb---fuck you) I extend my sincerest apologies for unjustifiably bastardizing your rightful properties as I had the misguidance to see fit and in advance, I thank you for NOT suing me. Please-please-please-please don't sue me. . .  
  
JEM: Blah-blah-blah. . .  
  
CAB: Shut your face, whore---we're not even supposed to be here. If we leave quietly, she might be nice enough to plug our komiks. . . .  
  
KOOLKAORI: So in the Final Analysis, all three of us--- Jem, Cab, and myself---are horrible people who no one should pay any attention to. Ever. In closing, I'd like to reiterate my thanks to you all and welcome all of your feedback. Jhonen-fans rejoice! This is the only Jhonen fanfic coming out of me (but I will show up somewhere on this site again in the near future---my evil laughter fades into the background). However, in the likely event you want more to complain about, you can visit the Pulp! Komik web site that may or may not be running right now (both Jem and Cab are inconceivably lazy people). Once there, you can also check out the panels Cab and Jem created for this story, as well as some original work from all three of us. I leave you with Jem's orgasmic pancake recipe--- sayonara, koolkaori.  
  
Jem's Orgasmic Pancake Recipe!!!!  
  
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour  
  
1 cup wheat-germ flour 3 tablespoons brown sugar, golden  
  
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda  
  
1/2 teaspoon salt  
  
2 large eggs, beaten lightly  
  
1 cup milk  
  
1/3 cup melted butter  
  
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract  
  
2 to 3 tablespoons vegetable oil, greasing the pan  
  
1 cup chopped walnuts* 1 1/4 cups fresh blueberries*  
  
Butter, accompaniment  
  
Syrup, accompaniment  
  
*these ingredients can also be added or subtracted to taste In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. These are all the dry ingredients, fuckers. Set aside. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, melted butter, and vanilla until well blended. Add the dry ingredients, and stir just until combined, adding more milk, 1 teaspoon at a time, if necessary to bring the batter to the thickness of heavy cream. Now add the walnuts. Be careful not to over- mix, and don't worry if batter is slightly lumpy---you can always have a homicidal maniac handy to help with this----BUT DO NOT LET HIM OVER- MIX!!!!! NO OVER-MIXING (remember, we are bending the rules of space, time, and culinary aptitude; over-mixing might irrevocably destroy some essential quantum-atomic anomaly, or. . .something. . .)!! And make sure he washes his goddamn hands----he might try to get away with not doing it, or try to viciously maim you with an aluminum mixing-wisk, but you must be uncompromising in regards to this rule. Grease a large, heavy griddle or skillet with butter, or have Fabio grease it for you with that low-calorie shit---whichever you prefer---and heat over medium-high heat. Dispatch a reasonable amount of batter into the skillet (this should be done in a circular shape, or a close approximation-- -however, for those of you on a multitude of mind-altering substances, this might not be possible. . .), allowing plenty of space for spreading. As the topsides start to bubble, in about 1 minute, sprinkle blueberries into each pancake. When the undersides of the pancakes are golden and the blueberries are set, flip with a wide spatula (sexy!). Cook until golden brown, 1 to 1/2 minutes. Serve immediately with fresh butter and syrup---you might want to butter and cut your homicidal maniac's pancakes for him, because you probably don't want him to be responsible for holding his own knife. Yield: 16 (4-inch) pancakes  
  
Prep Time: 20 minutes  
  
Cook Time: 5 minutes  
  
Difficulty: Easy Pancakes are also nice for issuing a good bitch-slapping. Have fun, jack-holes! Kiss-kiss, love, Jem. 


End file.
